On The Verge Of Winter

10 Kislev - Year 5771

Another month has passed! I apologise to the very few who still read this blog regularly...what can I say? Been busy, sorta.

Journeyed to "The Big Smoke" to see House Of Games at the Almeida Theatre in Islington a few weeks ago. My pal Will and I got the "Oxford Tube" (the Oxford Tube is a coach which you can get from Gloucester Green in the town centre), which dropped us off at Marble Arch. We then got the tube to Islington and found the theatre, just to be sure where it was. There was plenty of time before the show started, so we grabbed a pint at the King's Head pub and some lunch at Strada. I looked on-line and saw that there are a few record shops in Islington, so after much trekking about, we found Flashback Records. After rummaging through the outside racks of used CDs and vinyl (I found a beat-up, but playable LP copy of The Moody Blues' Seventh Sojourn) - we checked out the downstairs bit, where the rest of the records are. I found copies of Soft Machine's Third and Ananda Shankar's self-titled LP...along with a great copy of Herbie Hancock's Headhunters LP and a decent copy of Led Zep's IV record...the first-press edition with the error on the label ("Misty Mountain Hop" is called "Misty Mountain Top").

The play was excellent - I was going to post a complete review of it, but just ran out of time. The cast interaction was great and the dialogue, adapted from David Mamet's screenplay for the 1987 film, was hilarious in spots. Probably not to see if you don't like 'blue' language - but I enjoyed it. As I've said, I didn't remember the film all that much, so a couple of plot twists were new to me - I was actually quite shocked at one of them. I was able to meet with Amanda Drew afterward, too. She's quite lovely and was very gracious in hanging out for a few minutes - even though she was meeting with family for dinner. I was exhausted on the coach back to Oxford. All in all, a really really brill day out in London. Must do it again sometime!

The October episode of the Kaleidophonic Stroboscope was posted a few weeks ago. It's a tribute to little Gryphon, our cat who was killed early in October. Hope you like it - I've started on the newest episode and that will be posted when it's ready.

The goodwyf and I had a holiday in Cornwall last week. It was a nice break and we revisited places like Polzeath Beach and Padstow, where TV chef Rick Stein has a lot of establishments. I had some posh fish-n-chips (fish goujons, actually, don't you know) and we walked around the village and took lots of photos. We also ventured to Newquay and the Eden Project. I really liked The Eden Project - the 'biomes' are amazing and I was fascinated with a metal sculpture depicting the Dionysian Rites. The sculpture is by Tim Shaw, who is based in Cornwall. Amazing stuff! It's a really good job we didn't go the week after - that would not have been a good holiday.

Looks like it may be another cold winter approaching - there's already snow falling up Nawth. The storms may hit here later today or tomorrow....Yay.

Ah well, better wrap up warm and wrap up this post. More soon....I hope.